How do I alter index rebuild an entire database?

Question

I want to reorganize the indexes of all tables in my SQL Server 2008 database, named 'db'. I try the following command:

ALTER INDEX all ON db REBUILD

And I get the following error:

Cannot find the object "db" because it does not exist or you do not have permissions

What am I doing wrong?

Does the user that you are acting as have the correct access to the database? Are you able to create a maintenance plan that rebuilds the indexes, and execute that?

gbn · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-30 08:12:03Z

To do all tables:

EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'ALTER INDEX ALL ON ? REBUILD'

There is no statement to do all tables in the database like you tried above

However, sometimes you don't want this, say for read only tables or huge tables. Also, some tables/indexes will hardly be fragmented.

A more intelligent way is to check fragmentation first then rebuild or reorganise. One common and widely used example is SQL Fool's script

1 Answer